Leading up to Abigail’s birth one of the most frequent questions we got was “how do you think Mattie will do with the baby?” Now that Abigail is here with us, we still get the question fairly frequently, “how is Mattie adjusting with Abigail around?” The answer then was, “we think she’ll do great!” And now that Abigail has been with us for almost four weeks the answer is a resounding “they do great together!”
We couldn’t be happier. Mattie has always been a friendly, well-meaning, happy-go-lucky dog. She doesn’t have an aggressive bone in her body. When we are at the dog park and some other dog wants to get a bit more aggressive than Mattie is comfortable with, she’ll simply roll over on her back and be submissive. That being said, we were a bit worried, despite our confident outward demeanor. Mattie is a bundle of energy. She jumps on every visitor we have in spite of our best efforts. We were a bit worried she’d want to jump around all over the baby, not meaning to hurt her, but just because she was so excited to have a new member of the family.
That hasn’t happened at all. Mattie is still excited to sniff Abigail whenever the chance arises, but she does so in a controlled, friendly sort of way. To Mattie, Abigail seems to be an enigma, “Why is this little person here?” “Why does she make so much noise sometimes?” “And my goodness, she smells AMAZING!” I wouldn’t say that Kirsten and I are to the point where we’d leave Abigail and Mattie alone together, but Mattie is definitely taking on the role of big sister with aplomb.
Above is a shot of Mattie sniffing the car seat immediately upon us taking Abigail out when we first came home from the hospital.
We’d read that giving the dog a treat after they smell the baby or the baby’s things would help that dog associate good and happy things with the baby. It’s worked so far! Above is Mattie enjoying a “pup-eroni.”
When Mattie had finished eating her treat and mom and baby were seated in the nursery, Mattie was allowed her first sniff of Abigail herself. It went well. Mattie’s tail wagged uncontrollably!
Mattie calmed down after a few minutes and resorted to a gentle sniffing. She was really quite cute as she investigated Abigail and they got to know each other. We really feel lucky that Mattie has adapted to her new role so well.